I would like to study and pursue forensic science and crime scene investigation, which means working out in the field and not being confined to one specific space every single day. Over the past year, my grandmother was diagnosed with uterine cancer. Even after getting a hysterectomy, which removed the tumor, she still had to undergo months of radiation therapy. She was already weak because she is 76, and after the pandemic, she hasn't been able to taste or smell, meaning she doesn't want to eat, and she's lost a lot of weight. On top of that, she broke her ankle last year and is still recovering. After all of that, cancer was the last thing she needed, especially because we did not know if her cancer had spread anywhere, and it did not help that her lab results were constantly lost at the doctor's office. Watching her go through that radiation treatment tore me apart. Everyday after therapy, she sat in her living room for the rest of the day because she felt too weak to go anywhere or do anything. She would call me or my mother every day and cry her heart out. luckily, her treatment is over now, and her journey the past two years have inspired me to be as strong as she is. Between her cancer and her other obstacles, she barely left the house and was absolutely miserable, she felt like she was beyond unproductive. Hence, I want a job where I can go outside to different places every day, making a difference in the community. I don't want to be stuck in an office or business building everyday doing the same boring, restrictive things, like she was doing in her living room every day. I'm extremely grateful that this cancer did not take my grandmother from me. My other grandmother lost a battle to lung cancer when I was a toddler, and it pains me everyday that I never got to make many memories with her. I think it is quite sad that the only memory I have of her was when I was a very small child maybe 3 years old (this would definitely be one of my earliest memories), she was too weak to walk up the two steps outside my front door, and she had to sit outside on our front porch for the entirety of my birthday party because she couldn't make it inside. She died shortly after, and that is the only memory I have of her. I strive everyday to make her proud. I didn't get a chance to grieve her loss until I really understood what death was, which wasn't until I was ten or eleven. One of the only things I know about her was that she had a very unproductive life, and I want to work out in crime scene investigation to make a productive difference in the lives of others, getting justice and closure for those who lost a loved one too soon, just like I did. My grandmothers both suffered a great deal with cancer, and my career goals are to work out in the community and make a difference in the lives of those who suffered pain or a loss of a loved one.

Gen Z is such a strange generation because we are in between the millennials and Gen Alpha, so basically we're stuck between being addicted to pumpkin spice or tablets. Gen Z, however, being young adults, are at that age where we're still treated like kids, but expected to act like grown-ups. Right this instant, I have to decide where I want to go to college and what I want to do with the rest of my life. Yet I'm not allowed to go out on a Friday night if my parents won't let me. However, I'm grateful that I'm not part of any other generation. It's obvious how the newer generation is going to grow up with slang words that aren't even real words. Anytime I use "trending" slang like "sigma" or "rizz" around my friends, they give me the weirdest stares, and it's hilarious. Because let's face it...how bored did someone have to be to come up with all of this? Being a part of Gen Z means I was the worst age to be during the pandemic- a teenager going through puberty. The one thing I can't wait for is when I have kids one day, I'll tell my kids that I lived through a pandemic, so they can't complain when they can't leave the house. I'll also be able to tell my kids that I'm older than AI, which will blow their minds. Being Gen Z also means I'm not necessarily susceptible to brain-rot and memes on the internet, yet I still understand and enjoy them. I love being Gen Z because life is like one big computer; getting super overheated, needs to charge, a million tabs open, and I have no idea where the music is coming from or how to turn it off.

The last line in "Lacy" says, "I despise my rotten mind and how much it worships you". There have been so many people in my life that I don't like, yet I see myself envying over them anyways. Do I love them? Do I hate them? It's hard to tell, and it's as if the only reason I don't like them is because they have everything that I want but don't have. Jealousy is something I've always struggled with, and I feel like a lot of Olivia's music discusses comparing herself to other girls, which I relate to so incredibly much. All of the Lyrics in "Lacy" are praising and hating this girl all at once. This relates to my own teenage experience because like any other friend groups, people come and go, and there's always going to be fake friends and people who will make you miserable, yet you hang out with them anyways. It's as if you hate them, but you love them too much to leave them. This might not be the direct message of "Lacy", but this is how I relate to it. As a teenager, especially a teenage girl, life is full of comparison and insecurity. Moreover, in "Lacy", I really see that song as a song saying "I hate you so much, but I love you so much, and I hate that I love you this much". I have a friend like that now. She is immature and very "fake", she acts very stereotypical and I often don't like her attitude. It's worse that she is loved by everyone because in turn, I love her too. She is one of my best friends, but sometimes I hate her because of how she is perceived by everyone else. Olivia Rodrigo's GUTS album really resonates with the teenage experience because her music is about love, revenge, jealousy, and all the angsty feelings that girls go through, especially in high school. Other songs, such as "Get Him Back" and "Bad Idea Right?" really allow Olivia to connect with her audiences, but other songs like "So American" really capture feelings of love. GUTS has such a widespread variety of themes that every teenage girl goes through from love to hate to just wanting to be alone. No matter what emotion you are feeling, if you are in high school, you can go to this album and find a song that matches your mood. In her Sour album, I thought Olivia was complaining the whole time. But having matured myself, I now realize how valid the points she makes, and she continues with the validity in her lyrics in GUTS. In "Lacy", she says "I despise my rotten mind and how much it worships you". This really connects with me and my teenage experience because of the relationships I have with my friends. Sometimes I hate myself because of how much I care about my friends, whether they are genuinely bad people or they are praised by everyone.

I first started liking Sabrina Carpenter around 2014 when she was on "Girl Meets World". Soon after she was on the show, she released "Can't Blame a Girl for Trying", and I've followed her and her music ever since. I've always loved her style as an actress, singer, and person in general, and I've always looked up to her as a role model. Granted, her newer music is great, I even have the Short n' Sweet CD, yet I prefer her older music because it gives me such nostalgia. The amount of times I've screamed the lyrics to "On Purpose" in my car while driving home from school is too many to count. My favorite Sabrina album is Singular Act I because I like how self-loving it is. During the hardest times of my life, I listened to this album, specifically "Sue Me", because her songs helped me realize how powerful I am as an individual, I don't need dumb boys or fake friends in order to thrive. When Olivia Rodrigo released "Driver's License", and it was rumored that Sabrina released "Skin" as a comeback, I totally supported Sabrina. Whether the song was really about Olivia or not, I thought that the overall message of the song was so powerful. Since I was about six years old, I've always dreamed of going to one of Sabrina's concerts, but I never actually looked into it until it was too late. By that, I mean I was never old enough to buy my own concert tickets until recently and my parents weren't going to buy me tickets to see her. I got early access to her presale for being one of her top listeners on Spotify, yet when I saw that tickets were almost $400 for the back row, I knew I'd never be able to afford that. Sabrina has always been such a role model, and even lately as she's matured, she always makes songs and content for the female audience as a sense of fun and maybe a little bit of relatability. She never makes songs or performs specifically for male attention (unlike many of the artists in today's generation), no matter how "sexual" her recent performances have been. That's what I've always loved about her; she admits to being herself and having her own style. When she performs concerts, it is obvious how much she loves entertaining the audience and how much she cares about her fans. I really love Sabrina Carpenter because she writes, sings, and performs songs so well. She is also an amazing actress. Her morals and motives are all in the right places and she isn't selfish, which I understand can be difficult when the Hollywood industries can ruin singers' reputations. Whether she is acting, singing, dancing, or just having a fun time, Sabrina does everything with a meaningful purpose, which is so beautiful.

My favorite Billie Eilish song is "Everything I Wanted" because the introduction says "I had a dream, I got everything I wanted, Not what you'd think, and if I'm being honest, it might've been a nightmare". I like this introduction because it gives the impression that not everything is as it seems. Also, almost the entire song feels like it is discussing overthinking and the power of negative thoughts, which I can relate to. Later in the song, she says "when I wake up", and I personally always think of it as not waking up from sleep, but waking up from those negative thoughts that cause you to think that everything is a nightmare. My second favorite Billie song is "Lovely" because I've had issues with loneliness over the past few years, and I think the song is about trying to escape yourself. My favorite line is "heart made of glass, my mind of stone" because I truly relate to the fact that my heart is so fragile and easy to get into and break, yet my mind and thoughts are impossible to crush. My third favorite Billie song is "idontwannabeyouanymore". I like this song because in the lyrics "tell the mirror what you know she's heard before", it is more of a self-reflection song instead of a song that is hating on someone else. This song resonates with me because I feel like the song is talking about not feeling like myself on the inside and outside, which I experience quite often. Overall, I love Billie Eilish's songs because they aren't the typical love or breakup songs, but they talk about mental struggles and battles with one's own thoughts, which I relate to more than any other type of song.

I've always enjoyed the Broadway show, and Kristen Chenoweth has always been a role model of mine. One of my favorite "stories" (movies, plots) as a child was the Wizard of Oz, and I love how this storyline shows the background of the characters. When the movie came out, I was skeptical, because sometimes movie adaptations do not match the Broadway performances, but I thought all the actors did a wonderful job! My favorite song in the whole show has always been Dancing Through Life, I just think it is so fun, and being a dancer myself, I, too, have always been "dancing through life" myself. All of the vocals and acting in the movie was performed quite well and I can see why the movie gets all the praise that it does! Being an actor myself, in any show I watch, on screen or on stage, I always look at it from a performer's perspective, and I can truly see how much chemistry the actors have and how dedicated they are to performing their characters well. I first saw this show in 2020 on stage, and I thought that the songs, characters, and general plot was just so moving. I loved seeing the plot of the Wizard of Oz expanded more than the original storyline.

I mainly read fiction books, not because they're "easier" to read or follow along to, but because they allow me to escape into a new world that isn't my reality. The main things that I've learned from books, whether it's Shakespeare plays or the newest finds at Barnes & Noble, is that you are more than your thoughts. Common themes in books are misunderstandings or selfishness. My favorite books, including "All Your Twisted Secrets" by Diana Urban, "Nothing Like the Movies" by Lynn Painter, and "Turtles All the Way Down" by John Green, all depict a main character who is too caught up in her own tornado of thoughts to accept the blessings and amazing things that are actually happening in her life. I used to hate annotating books, I thought it would ruin the pages, but now I love it. I pick a highlighter for each book and only highlight the important quotes; the ones that can be real life lessons. In John Green's "Turtles All the Way Down", one of the quotes that stood out to me was, "You pick your endings, and your beginnings. You get to pick the frame, you know? Maybe you don't choose what's in the picture, but you decide the frame" (Green 277). I use this as a life lesson because I know that there are things in my life that I'll never be able to control, but I can at least change my perspective of every situation. Recently, I read "The House of Mirth" by Edith Wharton, which was a bit of a stretch, considering I haven't read much from the early twentieth century, although, I enjoyed it. The protagonist, Lily Bart, suffers from a gambling addiction and must sacrifice marrying the man she truly loves because she must find a rich husband instead, so she can pay off her gambling debts. The themes in this novel have taught me to not let my issues consume me. I'd never spoil the ending of a good book, however, Lily experiences a severe rough patch during the last few chapters and loses many things in her life. She allowed herself to go through these hardships by ignoring all the miracles in her life and only focusing on the problems that she could barely solve herself. In fact, I saw a bit of myself in Lily, since I, too, can allow my troubles to get the best of me. However, Lily taught me that stress should never allow me to lose sight of all the good things that are in my life. The books that I've read, and the lessons that they've taught me, have shaped my goals because I try my best to think past my anxieties. Anytime I'm facing a hardship, I always remember how in every movie I've seen or book I've read, the protagonist fails at attaining her goals because she didn't see the silver lining in situations. Whether it is in a friendship or any other kind of relationship, I always remember that I'm lucky to have these people in my life and to not take my relationship with them for granted.

First, and I hope this doesn't sound basic, but I love the beach. Specifically cities like Ocean City, MD, which is the one I go to the most, and I spend every summer there. Most years, I would help the people in our condo building to clean up the pool area by planting different flowers and plants outside the gates of the pool. We dig up weeds and make the area very aesthetically pleasing. The idea of not having beaches around due to pollution or dying plants really hurts. Secondly, I have been very interested in succulents and houseplants. In 2021 I went to a store in Fenwick, Delaware, and I bought a succulent, his name is Bartholomew. I liked the pot he was in, it was a purple monster-looking pot. I didn't care that he was nearly dead, I even bought a fake plastic plant to put in him once he fully died. However, I managed to take care of him and bring him back to life. He lived beautifully until recently. After thriving on my bedroom windowsill for nearly four years, no matter how much water or sunlight he got, he turned all brown and dry. I was heartbroken. Nevertheless, my mother has a large spider plant in our living room, and she is currently growing a mini one for me to put in Bartholomew's pot. I already decided that when I'm an old lady, I'm not going to be a crazy cat lady, I'm going to be a crazy plant lady. To continue with plants, my house has lots of flowers and special types of grass all around our front and back yard. Clearly want these plants to grow, but animals always wreck it by eating it or using them as restrooms. However, my parents want to ensure that whatever methods we use to protect our plants also do not harm the animals. Any spray we use, we make sure it keeps animals away by its bad scent, not deadly taste. We always make sure to use sprays that have more natural ingredients, not pesticides or chemically-loaded poisons. We've also tried to preserve the plants around our house with nets and fences, which keep them from getting eaten. To conclude, I love the environment very much, in terms of keeping the plants and those who are near the plants safe and happy. I enjoy helping plants to grow and flourish, whether they are miles away from home or in my own backyard.

My faith hasn't always been easy. Growing up, I felt like I was forced into my faith and my relationship with God was never something that I found important. However, when I came to Mount de Sales Academy (my school), everything completely changed. I became much more connected with my faith and I was able to discover who I truly am as a daughter of God. My faith has shaped my vision for the future through one of the most common ways: my vocation. I of course contemplated religious life, but I went on a religious retreat and I saw a vision of me as a wife; not God's wife, but a wife with a husband, children, and family. I've seen God work miracles in my life in so many ways, pulling me out of a rut that I had entered during my freshman year of high school. My faith has allowed me to be a leader because although I can be reserved at times, my friends and I have started a small Bible study that we try to meet with at least once a week. Over the past three years in high school, I was Chaplain for one of our school clubs and regularly led the club, as well as school events, in prayer. I have run for Chaplain for various other clubs/offices, but was unsuccessful primarily because everyone knows how school elections are mainly popularity contests. I'm still not the perfect Catholic, but I've improved my faith journey so much over the past few years. Most recently, I took a retreat/pilgrimage to Nashville, Tennessee, where I visited the Dominican Mother House. I went to mass at the Basilica, and I spent a few days learning more about the faith. I truly appreciated the time to reflect and explore my faith. More specifically, my faith has influenced my leadership style by allowing me to be an example for others. Whether the situation is about modesty, dignity, or looking for the silver lining, I've had plenty of experiences that have led me to believe how God has worked wonders in my life. I, as well as many of my closest friends have experienced various hardships over the past year or two, and I've always looked toward God, wondering what kind of lesson he is trying to teach me. God has pulled me out of the hardest times in my life, and I see that now that he has gotten me through those times, teaching me lessons along the way. I have learned through these experiences that the hardships are always worth it because God always has something greater planned. I therefore use these lessons to allow me to be a leader and role model for others on how to look toward God for lessons and guidance during times of trouble.

Fine arts develop a sense and passion of creativity that is stronger than any other more logic-based core class. In high school, I've been a member of the Honors Acting Ensemble for the past two years, where I've learned social skills such as how to work well with others. By performing, I can take a break from normal academics and explore a different environment: the stage. I have been involved in many of the theatrical shows at my school, including performing classic plays such as "Anne of Green Gables" (Miss Susan Stacy), or more intricate plays such as "A Midsummer Night's Dream" (Hippolyta). I admit, my vocal cords are not talented enough to shine during a musical, however, the fine arts are so important to me that I took over as the head of the costume department for this years musical "Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory". To be completely honest, dressing almost 20 Oompa Loompas was no easy task. If not for the fine arts, I would have continued my high school journey in athletics or my regular academic courses, none of which fuel me with the same fire and passion that theater does. Outside of school, I've been a dancer for almost 15 years, which is another interest of mine, but theater is how I connected to my community at school. Before perusing fine arts, I struggled to "fit in" to a community or social circle of people. The only reason I auditioned for theater my freshman year was because I was bored. However, as soon as I stepped foot into the fine arts building, I knew I had found my family. From that point on, theater was no longer just an activity to keep me occupied, it became my greatest passion. Additionally, I have combined my two favorite interests, theater and service, by helping out at my school's theater camp program for middle schoolers that lasts about a week over the summer. I thought performing was a joy, but it gave me an even greater joy watching others grow into the talented performers that they have the potential to be. Finally, I would use these funds to continue my theatrical journey. In college, I understand how competitive the fine arts programs can be, especially in terms of finding a job after graduation, which is why I will most likely major in some sort of science. However, I cannot leave my passion behind and I am considering minoring in acting or theatre in general. This financial investment will not only help me, but help my community, because I want to give back to the theater and other fine arts programs that have helped me along the way. My dance studio doesn't always have the best resources, and I would like to help them as much as I can while I am still dancing there. Thank you so much for this opportunity to apply for this scholarship. If not for my faith and service, the fine arts are such a major passion of mine and I truly believe it deserves more appreciation. The fine arts not only bring joy outside of school, but also allow students to meet new people and explore different interests they never knew they had. For students like me who never felt like they belonged, the fine arts has such a broad spectrum, from music to dance to theater, everyone is a family, and I would love to share my passion for the fine arts with the world.